The Red Phone Booth
by WastingWishes
Summary: AU. "You told me to never leave you." "But I did, and I m sorry." .SasuSaku


**The Red Phone Booth**

**_One-s__hot_**

**A/N: **...I suck. I know. But I will try my best _not_ to suck by uploading—_and updating_—much more regularly now. I hope. Anyways! I hope this one shot isn´t too disappointing, I love you all too much. **_Too much._**

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Naruto, but maybe one day I will persuade Kishimoto. That could happen.

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It was too cold in the phone booth.

Haruno Sakura sighed and leaned her large forehead against frosty glass. Should she or should she not make this call? There was not much change left in her pocket for a fruitless attempt; it almost seemed pointless now. She realized the hollow sound of raindrops against the roof was getting on her nerves…or maybe it was just the fact that it was inhumanely cold.

"One more try," she convinced herself and her warm breath melted the air, "I´ve got nothing to lose now."

She inserted a few coins and at the final click she began dialling, a number too familiar that it was a rhythm to her fingers.

There was ringing at the other end of the line, she expected this; almost a minute has passed without change, this she expected too. So she waited, and waited, and waited…until the painful realization hit her that it may have all been in vain. With great disappointment, she proceeded to hang up when she heard a voice muffled in the distance—

"Hello?"

Her heart stopped beating for a shocking millisecond.

A sigh was heard. "This better not be a prank call—or I swear to God I will fuck you up, dobe. No brainless idiot in the world would call someone at such an ungodly hour…"

The air was starting to get warmer and the scarf around her neck was suffocating; that or it was just all in her mind for she knew too well the impact of hearing that melodic voice once more. Sakura sighed and turned her head away, the emotional pain reverberating in her chest.

He must have heard her for the word, spoken with great familiarity, which pained her even more, came afterward with utmost disbelief. "Sakura…?"

Now she had curled into herself and tried to prevent the sound of grief from escaping her. Gently, her body heaved, sobbing at the mention of her name for she missed it too much. Sakura could not find it in herself to utter a word, let alone arrange them into a coherent sentence.

"Sakura." Uchiha Sasuke muttered so definitely that Sakura could have missed that accusing tone of betrayal.

Using the back of her gloved hand, she wiped her moistened cheek and simultaneously whispered, "I´m sorry."

The silence that followed pierced her chest. Speak, she pleaded to herself; but there was only the constant pelting of raindrops against glass.

"Hello?" Sakura called out anxiously, "don´t hang up—"!

There was inaudible breathing on the other line; the tone of reluctance.

"It was a mistake—"She cried out.

"_We_ were a mistake." He gritted through his teeth, "go back home Sakura. You´d catch a cold."

She huffed, pretending to not be hurt by his previous statement. He was always the over protective one, she thought to herself, even now. "What does it matter? I´m indoors. It´s not that bad." She lied, it was freezing, and she could barely feel the tip of her fingers.

Sasuke was annoyed. "Why did you call me?"

That was something she was trying to figure out; why, why _exactly_ was she calling him in the first place? For the peace of the mind, possibly, she reasoned to herself.

"I´m just waiting for the bus in the meantime, it takes them ages to get here…" She lied again in order to divert his question. Three buses had left and she had knowingly missed all of them.

This diversion did not escape his attention. "You still haven´t answered what I asked."

With a sigh, Sakura looked away through the dewy glass; her face frozen from the sudden wash of cold. "Remember that one night when we went over to Naruto´s house for a ´gathering´, or so it was called?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Hn."

She shook her head. "I expected that_. _Typical. Anyways, at one point everyone was deadly intoxicated, including me—"

"I wasn´t." Sasuke interjected irritatingly.

"Tch. Never the patient one are you? I was getting there." Sakura shook her head again. "But, out of all the immature bunch—as you have annoyingly reminded me—you were the only one who stayed sober…"

"Where is this story going?" Sasuke interrupted impatiently, irritated by the sleep that is being deprived from him.

Sakura ignored him and continued. "I was at the balcony, completely delusional, thinking I could fly—I was alone there, I remember. It was freezing," here Sakura paused to reflect how ironically cold it was in the phone booth too, "and I may have as well died if I took another step forward."

There was another beat of silence, a shred of breath and a sigh. The young Uchiha knew where this was going…

"It was that night." Sasuke acknowledged vacantly.

Without further explanations, Sakura agreed silently to herself, but proceeded nevertheless with her story;

"You ran towards me and held so tight that at one point I thought my lungs stopped working. Your arms squeezed the air out of me before dragging me back into the bedroom…" There was a muffled sob, as if she tried too hard not to remember what happened next "…I´ve never felt so secure in my life. But I did. That night, even when parts of it were hazy in my mind, I remembered the outline of your face too perfectly, the anxiety etched so faintly that I may have imagined it too."

Sasuke said nothing because he too remembered how he had feared nothing more in this world than to, _ironically_, lose her.

"I don´t really remember what happened next." Sakura continued. "I felt warmth around me and my clothes stripping away from me. I remembered then a stench of something foul like vomit—my vomit—but I also remembered the sound of running water, your hands down the small of my back, your forehead beaded with sweat when you tried to scrub me clean. I remembered the knifing brightness of the bathroom´s light through my eyes."

He did not want to listen anymore but was nevertheless propelled to wait until the end of a story he has never forgotten. An image already carved at the back of his mind.

Sakura´s eyes were now terribly moist and red. "Finally, clothed and clean, you laid me in bed. I felt like a child. It was dark once more and I…"

"—said ´_don´t go_´." Sasuke continued for her. He turned his head away and whispered; "you told me to not leave you alone. And I told you that I would never…at least not after seeing you almost plunging to your death." He grinned dryly at the memory. The images swirled back into his mind; the pale pink hair against the white pillow, her half-mast emerald orbs glistening with sleep, the inviting outline of her top lip, and how he had never loved anything more.

Knowing that he too has never forgotten, Sakura nodded to herself, voice hitching in her throat. "But I did, _I_ left you—"

At this Sasuke felt a painful twist in his chest.

"—and I´m _so_ sorry, Sasuke-kun. I didn´t know. I never imagined a second without you, but that—that moment of weakness, it overcame me. You started to become a figment of my own imagination, day by day. Each morning´s kiss became drier, devoid of emotion. Each kiss goodnight became less passionate. At one point, you started to come home later, for many consecutive nights. You even missed my birthday dinner that _I_ slaved hours upon hours to prepare—" she wiped the perpetual river of tears from her face, "—and frankly I was not as happy as I would like to be. I was a coward and I was scared. I needed space to breathe, to feel that I was myself again. I couldn´t love the man that you _were_, but endlessly hoped you would turn back into the man you used to be."

There was a broken muffle at other end of the line, almost like the receiver was covered on purpose.

"I need closure, Sasuke-kun."

Uchiha Sasuke just stared mutely at the wall opposite him. "I do too, Sakura." Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes shut. "Listen, I—"

The line was cut; she had used up all the limited time and no longer pocketed any change. So with all the courage mustered, pale hands pushed the door open, and stared at the illuminated window above her. Sakura observed, from a distance, the shadowy figure of a man who was once her everything—punching the opposite wall and destroying everything in his reach—and followed the movement of his arm, and the way he grabbed a rectangular item before switching the lights off. With that, she bid a silent farewell before walking her way back home.

Back at the Uchiha manor, Sasuke had fought the urge to ruin every single furniture that was in his sight. The painful tumult in his chest was feeling heavier each passing second. Crouching over the broken table, he retrieved a broken frame; one of him embracing a pink haired woman lovingly, at the heart of a rectangular space, which was a special phone booth that was situated not too far away from his doorstep.

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**A/N: **Comment if you love it (or/and hate it, whichever you prefer best) OR you could just tell me how much I suck at life. Either way, I still love you all :3


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